Wednesday, January 11, 2006

click on links?

Hi--I'm a new member. I have an embarrassingly basic question. How do I have click-on links in the body of my post. For instance, if I'm referring to another blog or website, i'd like the reader to be able to click on the name to visit said blog or site. Any help?

I use Blogger, but those tricks don't work with all browsers (Safari!!).Lucette, copy this "secret magic code" and save it. I have to chop it up into bits or Blogger will read it as an actual link and you won't "see" the code. Everywhere you see parentheses, you will NOT copy parentheses for your actual code:First part: type an angled bracket that points to the left (Second part: ("http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/") YOU MUST USE THE QUOTATION MARKS IN THIS PART; quotation marks have to surround the URL.Third part: (>Kalyn), and just after "Kalyn" you have to type () -- this becomes the closing marker for your code.When you copy this down and save it, run it all together without any spaces (and for god's sake, eliminate the "first part" etc.).OK, what you now have is some html code surrounding Kalyn's blog's URL (its Internet address, in other words). And you are also seeing Kalyn's name at the end, surrounded by code thingies.All you have to do is sub out Kalyn's blog URL with whatever other Web page address you want to link to. (I mean to cut and delete the part that goes http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/-- leave the quotation marks, though -- and in between the quotation marks, paste in the address you have in mind. And then, pick a word, any word, for the link you want to make active. In the above example, the word Kalyn (not the address part, but the Kalyn at the end of the code, before the angled brackets with the slash and the a at the end) is the active link. You just cut out the word Kalyn and type in, um, Cookiecrumb. Or whatever!Insert this coded mess in your blog exactly where you want the link to appear. For instance, I would cut out the word "Cookiecrumb" above and type in all the stuff I just told you right there in its place, and my name would then be a link to (god knows where).

Okay, you couldn't get more inexperienced than I was when I started blogging just three months ago and some of my early attempts at links show it.

All my hints refer to blogger because that's all I know.

1. Use the the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) compose tab, not the html tab for writing your post (suspect you are doing that anyway)

2. When you want to refer to a website, type in the whole address.

http://www.clickblogappetit.blogspot.com

for example.

That actually will create a link for you but it won't be pretty. It does work because that's what I did for the first two months until I figured out the next trick.

3. Switch to the html tab. Find your web link. You'll notice that is embedded in all sorts of codes that cookie crumb mentions in her comments. The url address is actually repeated, with the first mention in quotes. The second mention won't be in quotes. This is where you get to be creative. take out the second url mention, so take out the http:// and take out the web address (in my example, the www.clickblogappetit.blogspot.com)

IMPORTANT - leave in all the other coding!!!

Now in the space where you've removed the second or repeat address that is not surrounded by quotes, type in what you would like, be it the name of the website or link, the words click here or whatever.

4. Click back to the compse tab and finish your post. You can see right there if I did a good enough job talking you through this. Your newly minted link should show up there all underlined and ready to click.

Phew, I had the same question when I started but was too shy too ask.. so thumbs up Lucette! I have "mastered" this now (at least most of the times the links work LOL). Now working on "how to" with other tough questions like: I want to have my own banner, and I like to participate in an event and ... oh there is so much I don't know yet!

If you are using blogger, and your browser is Firefox, this is what you do:

In the tab that says COMPOSE...where you are writing your post, HIGHLIGHT the word(s) you want to create a link from.

THEN, click on the little button at the top right of your new post that looks like two links in a chain. When you click on that, a window will open with Http:// already in it. Add the rest of the url (for example http://www.freshcatering.blogspot.com) you want to link to and you are good to go.

If you arent using blogger, that wont do the trick.

As a WAY basic, WAY inexperienced blogger who knows DIDDLEY (that is not in the dictionary) I can say it doesnt get easier than this.

If you're going to do stuff on the web, you should try to learn a little HTML, it's easier to fix things under the hood if you know what you're looking at.

The 'a' tag stands for anchor. It needs a beginning and an ending tag (with a slash), as seen above with the angle brackets. The 'href' is your hypertext reference (the web page you want the link to go to). It must be in quotes.

In HTML there's something called an entity, which is a code that replaces a character. In correct HTML things like ampersands and register marks should be encoded. This really isn't a big deal, but it can throw certain browsers off.

But in some cases it's the only way to display certain characters, like angle brackets.

&lt; for the open bracket and &gt; for the close bracket. When using these when posting comments or on Blogger (and probably other blogging tools) make sure you hit 'Publish' and not preview, because when you preview, it changes the entities to the character, so when you publish it for real, it posts the character, not the entity, thus screwing it up.

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